In many industries, such as the steel industry, it is necessary to precisely inject or feed a length of metal tubing, wire or the like for use in manufacturing. Such wire or tubing is fed through a machine to measure it to a desired length. One preferred type of wire or tubing is known as cored wire, which can be formed from many different types of materials. The cored wire industry has become a widely accepted solution for past problems involved in adding components to metal, such as nozzle clogging in continuous casting steel plants that frequently occurred when producing alloyed steels.
Ordinarily, metal, such as steel, is produced with the addition of one or more metal alloys so that the metal may exhibit certain characteristics, such as machinability, hardness, strength, durability, elasticity, brittleness or corrosiveness. For example, aluminum steel exhibits a higher tensile strength and is smoother than non-alloyed steel. The addition of cored metal wire is a popular way to produce alloyed steels due to its applicability to a diverse number of alloys and ability to exhibit certain desired properties.
Cored wire and solid wire are generally formed from well-compacted metal powder that is uniform in weight along the length of a wire. As a result, the length of the cored or solid wire corresponds to an amount of compacted powder. Therefore, a particular amount of metal powder required for the manufacture of a particular alloy can be easily measured and added to steel based on the length of the metal wire.
Manufacturers of steel alloys require large amounts of cored wire. This demand for cored wire, together with the popularity of cored wire in producing steel alloys, has led to a mass production of cored wire. Accordingly, manufacturers of cored wire produce and package long lengths of cored wire that are typically caged or reeled for ease in transportation and distribution. However, working with caged or reeled cored wire when producing metal alloys can be cumbersome and extremely burdensome. Further, in order to produce steel with accurate percentages of alloys, precise lengths of cored metal alloy wires must be added to liquid metal, preferably into a ladle prior to casting.
As a result, a need has grown for a machine or apparatus capable of feeding or injecting the caged or reeled cored wire into the ladle. In addition, a need exists for a machine to precisely measure cored wire to a given length for the addition of cored wire into a ladle.
While cored wire injectors are known, the present state of technology of is such that cored wire injectors are expensive and difficult to use and repair. For example, known wire injectors require two or more pneumatic actuators for each cored wire path fed by the injector. Known wire injectors require customized motors that are expensive to produce and to repair. The customized motors are typically located between core4d wire paths making the servicing of customized motors more expensive and time consuming. In addition, the vast number of parts in known wire injectors increases the frequency of failures and reduces the service life of the wire injector. Accordingly, such known wire injectors are costly to produce and operate.
As a result, a need exists for a wire injector that is less costly to manufacture, service, and operate. A need also exists for a wire injector capable of operating without customized motors. A further need exists for a wire injector having one or more motors positioned in a location operable for servicing. A need also exists for a wire injector requiring fewer parts for feeding cored wire through the wire injector.